The Cold
by Janethonfire
Summary: Hope is gone, life is dead. Yet the Mockingjay lives and so does the Boy With the Bread. How Peeta and Katniss Got back together. Read and Review! Please it's much apreciated. Rated for sensitive topics
1. The Hanging Tree

**I don't own the Hunger Games**

Cold, her body is cold. She can feel it in the in-between of her toes and the point of her nose. It's very much like being pulled out of the ocean after almost drowning. In fact it's the exact same thing. Everything around her comes into focus as if she have been blind for the past month. There's a window in front of the bed, how did she not notice they moved the bed to face the window? And then it comes, like the drowning man gulps for air she does too, but her gasps are accompanied by salty tears.

Someone opens the door harshly and she jumps back in the bed and make startled animal noises she didn't know she could make.

"Good lord! Girl you're awake!" the old woman cries. It doesn't help her tears to see Greasy Sea. She just came back from under a deep ocean and all she needs is air.

She knows Sea doesn't mean she's woken up from slumber; she hasn't closed my eyes in days. No, she just came back from a dreamless sleep that resembles death more closely.

OOOO

Greasy Sea makes her get out of bed; she's jumping up and down like food was raining from the skies. She does as the older woman says; she doesn't want to think about what she wants to do. Thoughts are dangerous, thoughts are memories.

"Take a shower girl, leave the door unlocked" Sea warns her, she wonders what she did when she was in a daze to make her so nervous of leaving her by myself. She doesn't really wash herself, she just stares in amazement at the patches of skin that have been sewed in to her arms and legs. She runs her fingers through her hair, its shorter than it used to be a little below her shoulders. It looks like it hasn't been brushed in years. Katniss Everdeen, girl on fire, looks like a ragged doll.

After a while Greasy Sea comes in and washes her hair, wraps a towel around her shoulders.

"Come with me girl" she says wrapping an arm around her leading her in front of the mirror.

"You bout scared the life of everyone around here. We thought you were permanently…whatever that was. Don't ever do that again ok?" she says as Sea braids her hair in a simple braid down her back. She nods but she can't make any promises.

"So you aint talking? I'm not really surprised, would've been a miracle if you started talking right away. Oh! I have something for you girl they found it with you, here" she hands her something really small. She holds back a sob.

She stands up harshly and throws it on the ground.

She doesn't want to think, she can't think, thoughts are dangerous, she runs out of the house as a pile of memories falls on her like a stack of domino's one after the other they fall on her.

That was Prim's favorite chair, that's where she asked me if I loved Peeta. Peeta, what happened to him? It didn't matter, she didn't need anybody else to worry about, someone else who would leave her. They had all gone, were where they now? She wanted to shout at them. How dare they make her love them? How dare they whisper promises of friendship, loyalty, and love when they were going to leave her all by herself?

No matter how long she runs she can't seem to get far away from death. Maybe it's time, she thinks.

Life is too complicated, too painful. She curses the fool out loud who ever warned her that good people went to heaven and bad people went to hell. She wanted to laugh you don't go to hell, they lived in it. She didn't mind if her death was simple for her life had been complicated enough. Something simple, something quick…..

Two verses came to mind as an answer. Something quick, something simple.

_Are you, are you  
Coming to the tree_

She ran to the small house by the lake hoping that everything she'd left there remained. She sighed as she saw the lone rope hanging from the wall.

She sat by the lake for a while, admiring its beauty for the last time, she allowed herself to smile as she expertly tied the rope. Maybe she'd see Finnick once she was gone, show him how good of a rope tier she was now.

"_I'm still better looking" _he'd say with a wink. She eagerly stood and hung the rope on a tree in front of the lake. What a beautiful place to go, here in the woods by the place she loved most, uncorrupted, unadultured.

She smiled and sang The Hanging Tree. She had to admit that people were right; she had her father's voice. There was something amazing about going, but not without leaving an echo behind. A cry to all those who had killed all hope.

She stepped on the boulder and put her head inside the rope, tying it closer to her neck.

_Are you, are you_

_Coming to the tree_

She sang before kicking the piece of wood she stood on. Her body screamed in pain, clawing grasping for life but she didn't regret anything. Her vision blurred and the pain began to subdue, but just before her vision went black she heard her name being shouted.

_I'm coming Prim, _she thought but in between the entire blur in her vision she could see a blonde boy running towards her.

**Hey Guys, I hope you like it. I'm sorry its such a cliffhanger. I know this has been done multiple times, but I want to have a shot at the whole 'How they got back together" thing. Please review and tell me what you like out of these type of stories.**

**Thanks for reading! Love ya, **

**Mel**


	2. Ten Reasons

**YAY! Okay finally my laptop got fixed and I can update. I was worried this might get lost during the fixing but thankfully my writing and music are all intact **

**~S.I.D.O.T.H.G: Sadly I don't own the hunger games.**

She cursed him once, twice, a thousand different ways hoping that one of them would be harsh enough that he'd drop her from his shoulder and allow her to try again. She didn't know if her body would allow it again after having experienced the pain of suffocation, but hell she could try.

"Let me go you ignorant son of a bitch!" she shouted as loud as her abused throat could manage but it was as if he were deaf. She examined him to find a way she could escape.

She was surprised he had the strength to carry her so easily when he himself looked like a ragged doll of his own. His eyes were blue again but there was something in them that hadn't been there before. She could see his neck from where she was, flung over his shoulder, it was covered in patches like her although his looked lighter. He wore a long sleeved sweater, probably to cover said patches, she wanted to laugh at his vanity and scream at him at the same time.

"How did you find me" she finally said. Her voice sounded hoarse, detached. He didn't answer for a while and she decided he still hated her, thought she was a mutt.

"Greasy Sea went to get me and Haymitch after you took off, he was half drunk so I went to go look for you, I knew you'd go to the forest." There was no voice in his words, no appeal to be his friend, or to do as he said. The boy with the bread didn't live in that body anymore, he too had left.

"I'd never been to the forest before, I was lost for a while but then I heard you" he said as an afterthought.

"I don't remember crying for help" she gruffed.

"No. No you didn't scream….You sang. A little bird, probably the last one to hear you repeated the melody and I just followed the rest of them." He said dropping her to the ground.

She landed on her feet and stared at him in amazement.

"Now I don't know about you but I'd say that's life telling you something. Listen I don't know if it was seeing me the last time that freaked you out and caused you to be in that awake coma thing or if it was the flowers the…primroses. But if it is I just want you to know that I'm not ganna…you know try to kill you again or anything, the doctors in the capitol did a pretty good job" he said looking down at his double tied shoelaces.

He looked up at her from under his eyelashes. He looked sixteen again, something neither of them had done in a while.

"Do you…remember?" she said, her throat tight for very different reasons.

"I remember now, what's the most important" he said.

"And that is?" she asked, her eyebrow rose.

"We can't afford to lose Katniss Everdeen" he said, a hint of a grin playing at his lips. He left then, leaving her standing in the porch in front of her house looking out to an empty world.

Maybe she wouldn't leave just yet, not until she saw what would become of Peeta Mellark. She stared at the orange sunset, almost too big for life.

She grinned a bit, Peeta Mellark was like the sunset, so big and bright and complex that even if you tried to cover its grandeur it would still shine right through the cracks of your fingers.

He hadn't let the Capitol beat him, even after being torn from his own mind he had come back, somewhat. Why should she let them win? She touched her neck and made her way inside to tend to her wounds.

And after only one day of being awake in the most simple way possible, she went to sleep for the first time in two weeks.

She went to sleep hoping that the morrow would be kinder. But it wasn't.

The thing about almost dying is that you begin to realize all the things you forgot to say goodbye to before what you thought would be your parting. And for Katniss Everdeen the list wasn't very long, which made her failed attempt look better than it did the night before under a pair of aquaic eyes.

She tried desperately to find five things, only five, that made her life worth living. She couldn't come up with three. She dressed and for a moment she considered drowning her sorrows, literally, but she couldn't.

She had this idea in her head, one that had planted itself decisively in her stubborn mind. Gale had told her once about a story he heard from his mother. It was a biblical story, the type that was now used as a bedtime story, a tale. As he told it there was once a city that was full of sin and God seeked to destroy it, but an angel came forth and asked god to forgive the city.

God promised that if the angel could find ten good men in the city he would not destroy it. The story went on, something about a lady turned to salt, but she couldn't remember. She was surprised she could remember even that of a life that seemed so far away.

So she decided that maybe, just maybe if she could come up with ten reasons why Katniss Everdeen should remain existent than she could find the will to stay alive, that fire that everyone seemed to admire.

So she headed out the front door, wearing a brown coat that cut at her hips, pen and paper stuffed safely inside. Just ten things.

**Will Katniss Find All Ten? Will Peeta be irresistibly cute? Will Haymitch make an appearance? Tune in next time, for the new chapter! Seriously.**

**Thank you so much for reading, Please Please leave your review and let me know wasssup.**


	3. I Should Live Because

**New Chapter! YAYA! Thanks to everyone who followed and favorite this story but would it hurt to just leave one tiny review? PLEASE! I want to know what you guys think. Anywho…**

**~S.I.D.O.T.H.G**

She pulled her coat over her exposed chest, to be honest she didn't know what day it was. Or month, or year. The wind was blowing heavily leaving a pile of accumulating leaves at her doorstep. The sun outside was setting a bright orange, almost red.

She looked down at her rusted brown boots, overwhelmed by the sight.

Well she had to start somewhere, she thought in dismay and headed to the town center.

_My name is Katniss Everdeen, I am 18 years old and I should live because…._

She looked around the half destroyed plaza but nothing seemed to quite fill in the sentence. Not the burnt buildings, not the lone benches lined against some of the open shops. She sat in one of them and looked around.

The world was so surreal to her, she was just an observer, the reason for her whole existence was gone and now she was just a lifeless sack of bones with no reason to be. She remembered a time when she would walk into town.

A thin but alive girl with long dark hair, she wasn't intimidates by the town people looking at her, judging her. At least she didn't show it. She wondered if that girl would've agreed to this, saving all the generations to come from gore and terror at the price of losing her little sister.

She didn't think so. The thought made her grinned a bit, maybe she hadn't changed that much. Maybe that girl she was once would make the same decisions but one, she wouldn't have tried to take her life.

She had spent too much time fighting death for that.

So she took out the piece of paper and wrote:

_I should live because I am not the kind of person that welcomes death so easy._

She stood and walked towards the woods.

Some of the houses closer to town were being built. As she walked she saw in the distance a group of kids running in her direction, although they weren't running to her. They stopped near a tree and were all attempting to climb it quite unsuccessfully.

Their laughter ringed throughout the empty district. After some thought she wrote:

_I should live because it is offensive to new life to throw mine away._

She walked until she reached the fence, she was about to cross it when something caught her eye. It wasn't much just a pile of ashes that happened to be her old home.

It shouldn't surprise her, she'd seen it before, but the ache that nailed at her heart was the same as it was the first time she'd seen it.

Inside were the ashes of everything she'd ever treasured in life. Under the stained concrete were old rags tainted in black, glass pieces scattered all over. She began to imagine where everything had been, that used to be where her bed was, and over there that was the kitchen. And right here under my feet that's where…

"My father's mirror was" the words slipped out without her permission or notice.

She moved off to see what she was standing on. A large piece of concrete that probably came from the roof was under her feet so she began to move it with all her strength. She thought she heard someone's footsteps but there was no one as she looked around. And finally there under her feet was the crushed mirror.

That's not what bothered her, as she picked up a piece of the mirror in her hands. Covered in coal dust, like her father hated. She fanatically whipped it on her shirt and sleeve until it was polished clean. She placed it in her pocket and wrote on the paper leaving coal fingertips:

_I should live because my father would've wanted me to._

She continued on to the fence and headed for the same spot she had been going to for five years before the games. She sat on the same rock, looked out into the same landscape but next to her the rock was empty. The expanse where he should've sat seemed grand.

She didn't love Gale, but he was important. She wished she could tell him about everything that had happened, and not to the military general that killed ruthlessly, but to the boy who made her life bearable all those years.

He owed her an apology and maybe he was a great buffoon but she wasn't going to go without hearing it.

_I should live because I'm waiting for an apology._

Admiring the beauty of the forest and as an afterthought she wrote:

_I should live because that's how nature works._

She was rising to make her way home when she heard a twig snap, she instinctively reached for an arrow but she hadn't thought to retrieve her weapons when she entered the woods. She looked around for the nearest tree and climbed as fast as she could.

She hid behind the branches and as she was looking out her eyes locked with what lay below.

**Thanks for reading guys! No other way to say it. PLEASE! PLEASE! REVIEW REVIEWREVIEW**


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